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The Slave Market in Rio De Janeiro Circa 1869: Movement, Context, and Social Experience

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The Slave Market in Rio De Janeiro Circa 1869: Movement, Context, and Social Experience 28 August 2009 spatial history lab The Slave Market in Rio de Janeiro circa 1869: Movement, Context, and Social Experience Zephyr Frank1 & Whitney Berry2 The market for slaves in Rio de Janeiro underwent a series market, slaves were often rented out to third parties or expected of major transformations over the course of the nineteenth to work outside of the supervision of their masters.4 Thus, slaves, century. Prior to 1831, slaves poured into the city during the sometimes operating autonomously, were found in virtually every period of the legal Atlantic slave trade. Tens of thousands more part of the city. Africans landed in Brazil’s imperial capital before the illegal Atlantic trade was finally suppressed in 1850.1 Thereafter, Argument buying and selling slaves shifted to a local market typified Contrary to life in rural areas, slaves in Rio de Janeiro rarely by individual sales.2 The proportion of Brazilian-born slaves had the opportunity to marry and they tended to live alone or rose and the social experience of the market changed for all in small groups of unrelated individuals (the primary exception parties involved. Rather than a concentrated, large-scale being slave mothers with young children).5 Their social ties were, process dominated by formal market spaces and professional therefore, more tenuous and dependent on institutions such as slave traders, the mature slave market in Rio de Janeiro religious brotherhoods and, we hypothesize, neighborhood friends evolved after 1850 into a continuous (in the sense of both time and acquaintances.6 Therefore, the experience of being sold and and space) process that encompassed every neighborhood forced to move to an entirely different neighborhood would likely in the city. The absence of an individual slave would be felt have been much more significant than the case of a sale from one in the neighborhood from which she originated, just as her owner to another in the same street. What is more, buyers and new presence would be felt in the home and neighborhood sellers often came from quite distinctive social and economic of her new owner. Mapping the origins and destinations of backgrounds. This suggests that the characteristics of owners, slaves in this system, using detailed transaction data from as well as spatial distance, may have played a profound role in the year 1869, highlights the ubiquity of slavery in Rio de determining how a sale affected slave experience. There are no Janeiro as well as the constant movement of slaves in and out slave diaries or oral histories available to answer these questions in of new environments. Connecting buyers and sellers to data the context of sales within the city of Rio de Janeiro. Court records regarding their wealth and occupations further highlights the may provide some detail regarding individual cases, but these are significant changes experienced by all parties caught up in the problematic because they involve, by definition, unusual cases system. Dynamic visualization techniques reveal meaningful where conflicts erupted. Our approach is different. Taking over patterns at multiple scales. 1,107 slave sales from the year 1869, we mapped the locations of buyers and/or sellers in 351 cases.7 Where possible, we connected Keywords: slavery, Rio de Janeiro, slave market, slave mobility, these individuals to information about the neighborhood within property values which they resided by calculating neighborhood rental values according to data from the decima urbana (property tax roll) for Historical Context the year 1870.8 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s imperial capital, provides the setting The spatial context for the analysis of these data is provided by for this study in spatial historical visualization. An emerging a historical GIS for 19th century Rio de Janeiro, developed by our metropolis in the middle years of the nineteenth century, Rio de team at Stanford’s Spatial History Lab. We mapped the residential Janeiro’s population and economic status were unparalleled in addresses of buyers and sellers within the space of the city using a Brazil. With 272,000 residents in the urban parishes according historically-accurate street network. to the 1872 census, the city accounted for a disproportionate share of the country’s export trade (dominated by coffee) and was Analysis home to nearly all of the important institutions of the state. In this Our analysis centers on the notion of changing circumstances context, a population of nearly 50,000 slaves lived, worked, and associated with slave sales. Slaves moved from sellers to buyers were sometimes bought and sold.3 Although slaves made up just and, in the process, from one household and neighborhood to under one-fifth of the population, they accounted for a much more another. The greater the change in household and neighborhood, significant proportion of the labor force, particularly in the manual the more profoundly slaves experienced the effects of being sold in trades and domestic service. The distribution of slaves was broad Rio de Janeiro’s complex urban setting. There are three important in Rio de Janeiro, with very few owners commanding more than ten categories where we can observe the degree of change in our bondspersons. In addition, given the urban environment and labor dataset. First, we examine the simple question of distance: how 1Associate Director, Stanford University Spatial History Project, 2Geographic Information Systems Research Assistant, Stanford University Spatial History Lab 1 ©2009 Stanford University Spatial History Lab. All rights reserved 28 August 2009 spatial history lab far did slaves move? Second, our data allows us to determine the the average distance traversed by males was 1,408 and by females gender of buyers and sellers, providing insight into this important 1,198 meters. Women buyers and sellers, a relatively small dimension of change in circumstances. Third, using detailed minority in both cases, tended to transact across shorter distances, information about property values, we can address the question suggesting that gender influenced distance both with respect to the of change in general neighborhood characteristics as well as in characteristics of the slave and the owners. Finally, in the limited the specific value of the properties of sellers and purchasers. Our number of cases where it was possible to calculate neighborhood focus on these three categories is warranted for the following basic rent statistics, on average slaves experienced a 41% absolute reasons: difference between the rent values associated with their previous home and their new one. 1) Since slaves were somewhat (or entirely) constrained in their movements, being sold over a great distance meant Conclusions and Pathways for Further Exploration moving partly or wholly out of one context and into another. The data and accompanying visualizations presented here Maintaining connections to the old neighborhood would, reveal complex and meaningful patterns in slave experience. Rich we hypothesize, become increasingly difficult over greater data regarding buyers, sellers, and their slaves, illuminate a dynamic distances. In addition, in cases where slaves were sold out of market system differentiated along lines of gender that sometimes the city or purchased from sellers in other communities, the thrust slaves into dramatically different living conditions. Because spatial dislocation would have been complete. the data contains elements of both space and time, it moves beyond 2) The gender of a slave’s owner was consequential for static portraits of slave life and begins to capture the dimensions at least two reasons. First, female slaves made up about 55 of instability and change experienced by thousands of slaves in the percent of the average woman slaveholder’s bondspersons; city of Rio de Janeiro over the course of the nineteenth century. on the other hand, females made up about 36 percent of the Connecting these events to detailed information regarding the average male slaveholder’s bondspersons. Thus, on average, wider context of slave’s points of departure and destinations yields a slave sold from a male owner to a female owner would move further insights into how changes in ownership were significant for from a world dominated by male slaves to one where female individual slaves and for categories of bondspersons. slaves made up a slight majority. Second, female owners, There are significant limitations to our analysis, including on average, were slightly more likely to manumit their a lack of full information with respect to most cases of slave bondspersons, and their propensity was to manumit female sales. Furthermore, our data cover but part of one year, 1869, slaves. Thus, a female slave sold from a male owner to a and only future archival work will tell whether these patterns female owner might see a slightly higher chance of freedom were similar over longer stretches of time. Finally, our approach in the long run. A male slave in the same scenario might to understanding changes in slave experience is indirect and actually see a slight decrease in the chances of manumission. inferential. This probably cannot be helped, given the paucity In any event, the immediate effect of being sold would often of information available in the archives concerning what slaves be to place the prospect of liberty further over the horizon for themselves felt about their lives and owners. Nevertheless, here a slave, as many owners who manumitted their bondspersons for the first time we see the outlines of the slave market in Rio de did so on account of their years of “good service,” a laurel Janeiro at a particular point in time. We see slaves in motion and slaves could only hope to garner after a significant period of can begin to do the work of historical sleuthing and imagination time. necessary to give meaning to their paths through the city. 3) The value of property occupied by the slave owner is a reasonable proxy for their economic standing.
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